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When I told my next door neighbor in May of 2008 that I was going to sell the house along with all of my personal possessions and move to Chiclayo Peru with my Peruvian wife, his response was..” That’s a path not many men walk.” I had that impression as well, but have since learned that many men and women have walked and continue to walk that path. There is a large expatriate community in Lima and a significant number of gringos scattered about the remainder of the country from the larger coastal cities to the smallest jungle villages. Many of them have personal blogs in which they offer travel advice, news, and a wealth of other information along with their individual experiences. The purpose of this blog is not so far reaching. My intent is simply to record my experiences and observations for family, friends and anyone else who may be interested, but mostly for myself. Peru is to me a musical, magical land and I’ve found that writing about it helps me to preserve the beauty I experience as I explore this enchanting country. Anyway, thanks for visiting my site. Feel free to come back again, and leave a comment if you’d care to or send an email to me at kaetan1@gmail.com.

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The Village of Los Bances

The village of Los Bances, located in the northwest portion
of the Tùcume district would be indistinguishable from surrounding villages
were it not for three modern concrete buildings in the center of the village. One
of the buildings is a secondary (high) school with 200 students. A second is
the primary (grade) school with 180 enrolled. Both are reasonably well equipped,
including three-burner gas stoves supplied by the government to cook the free food
distributed to poor communities. Between the two schools there are 19
classrooms, each well-furnished lacking only whiteboards, though the plaster
chalkboards are in excellent condition. Johanna is the director of both schools.
She has 17 teachers reporting to her. The third building is a kinder. It too is
well furnished and maintained.

The schools are in Los Bances only because the village is
centrally located to about a dozen other villages, so the vast majority of the
students do not live in Los Bances. When the schools were built five years ago
there was adequate room for all eligible students from the area. Now things
have changed.

The original kinder was designed to accommodate forty
students. There are fifty students in the classroom. Recently a modular
classroom was constructed to hold thirty more students. Now it is full. There
are at least another twenty students eligible to attend kinder and no room for
them.

To deal with the situation the parents association last
March acquired temporary use of an old building close to the kinder. Tables and
chairs were borrowed from the primary school. Martha, a retired teacher was persuaded
to take control. The pronoei they created is simply called Los Bances.

The room is small and is at capacity with the present
fourteen students. The remaining six eligible students are either scattered
among overcrowded pronoeis in other villages or are not being schooled.

Martha phoned Promesa Peru last June asking for help but
somehow her request got lost and we dropped the ball. She desperately needs
teaching aids…tangrams, abacus, puzzles, books, crayons, pencils and paper. We
want to supply those things to her along with a whiteboard and storage shelves.
It wouldn’t take more than $200 to do that.

$50 will buy a whiteboard or two storage shelves. $5 will
buy 5 story books. $10 will provide 5 puzzles. $15 purchases 5 packs of
crayons, 5 coloring books and 3 notebooks. Won’t you please help us to help
Martha and those kids? If you have a few dollars to spare please visit the Promesa
Peru webpage to donate. Thank you.